Terror Tower Page 12

  ‘If you don’t mind,’ he said, rising to his feet, ‘I think I’ll put a call through to London and find out what time White left.’

  ‘Carry on,’ said Jim. ‘While you’re staying here you can look upon the house as your own.’

  Lowe had some difficulty in getting connection, but presently he heard the voice of his housekeeper demanding to know who it was.

  Lowe told her.

  ‘Why, he left directly after lunch,’ said the woman. ‘About half-past two that was.’

  The dramatist’s face went suddenly grave.

  ‘Half-past two, was it?’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

  He hung up the receiver, and as he turned away from the instrument he was feeling really alarmed.

  Arnold White should have reached Stonehurst hours ago. What had happened to him?

  His first thought was an accident to the car. But he quickly discarded that possibility. The car could easily have been identified, and the housekeeper would have heard from the police, and the information been relayed to him.

  No; the reason for his secretary’s non-appearance was due to some other cause.

  He went back to the drawing-room, and his face must have shown the anxiety he was feeling, for Jim said quickly:

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  Lowe explained, and both McWraith and his friend looked uneasy.

  ‘What can have happened to him?’ muttered Jim.

  ‘That’s what I’m wondering,’ said Lowe. ‘Do you remember my telling you about those Scotland Yard men who disappeared —?’

  ‘Good God!’ broke in McWraith, his florid face a shade paler. ‘You don’t think that —’

  The end of his sentence was interrupted by the whirring of the telephone bell, and Jim, leaping to his feet, went out into the hall.

  They heard him lift off the receiver and inquire who was speaking, and then in a louder voice call:

  ‘Mr. Lowe! Superintendent Hartley wants you.’

  Lowe was at his side almost before he had finished speaking and had taken the receiver from his hand.

  ‘Hallo!’ he said. ‘This is Trevor Lowe. What is it, Hartley?’

  ‘A constable on patrol duty has just reported having found your car, sir,’ answered the gruff voice of Hartley. ‘It was standing deserted on a piece of waste ground just outside Stonehurst. He examined it and found your name and address. Do you know anything about it?’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Lowe grimly. ‘But there’s a lot I want to know. He didn’t see anything of my secretary, did he? He ought to be with that car.’

  ‘There was nobody with it,’ answered the Superintendent; ‘nothing but two suitcases, sir.’

  ‘Where are you?’ asked the dramatist.

  ‘I’m at the station at Hythe, sir,’ was the reply. ‘The constable’s report came through to the sergeant ten minutes ago, and when I heard I thought I’d better ring you up.’

  ‘I’m glad you did,’ said Lowe. ‘Where is the car now?’

  ‘Where it was found, sir — the constable’s with it. I told him to go back and keep an eye on it until I had phoned you.’

  ‘All right, Hartley; thanks,’ said Lowe. ‘I’ll go along there now.’

  He put the receiver back on the hook and turned to Jim and McWraith, who had been listening.

  ‘Will you drive me along to the place?’ he asked after he had given a résumé of Hartley’s conversation.

  ‘Of course,’ answered Jim. ‘Come along.’

  He pulled on a coat and opened the front door.

  The garage was round on the opposite side to the Tower, and with Lowe’s help he very soon had the doors open and the car out.

  They picked up McWraith as they swept round into the drive, and that huge man perched himself on the back.

  It took them some little time to find the exact place where the car had been abandoned, in spite of Hartley’s directions. But they found it at last — a triangular piece of waste land near the cross-roads — and Lowe made himself known to the constable on guard.

  ‘I only found it meself by accident like,’ said the man, ‘thought I heard somethin’ movin’, and flashed on me light. It was a rabbit what I’d ‘eard, but the light fell on the car, an’ I went to see what it was all about.’

  Lowe pulled out his own torch and shone it on the stranded machine.

  There was no sign of it being damaged at all, and he switched on the lights. They glowed blindingly.

  And then Jim who had been walking round the car uttered an exclamation.

  ‘Why both the front tyres are flat,’ he exclaimed.

  Lowe stooped and examined them and quickly found the cause of the punctures. In one of them, buried in the tread, was a metal spike.

  ‘This was no accidental puncture,’ he said. ‘The road must have been strewn with these things for both tyres to have gone.’

  His voice was hoarse and strained with anxiety, and straightening up, he made a hasty search of the interior of the car.

  But he found nothing. There was no sign of any violence — nothing at all abnormal except those two flat tyres.

  Neither was there anything to show what had happened to Arnold White. Like Locker, Scory and the other two Scotland Yard men, he had disappeared completely and without trace.

  Chapter Sixteen – The Warning

  Long after the last light in the cottages and houses of Stonehurst that night had gone out, long after the Crossed Hands had closed its door on the departing figure of its last customer, a hastily organised search party, headed by Superintendent Hartley and Lowe, beat the woods and the thickets and searched the fields and lanes for some trace of Arnold White.

  Every available constable that could be spared had been rushed over from Hythe to assist the seekers, and their lanterns, like great glow-worms, flickered and danced here and there in the darkness of the night.

  Dawn came greyly, paling the light of the torches and showing up the haggard lines on the face of Trevor Lowe, the heavy pouches beneath the eyes of Hartley, and the anxiety in the eyes of Jim Winslow and Ian McWraith.

  But it brought with it nothing else. No sign of White, alive or dead.

  One thing only had been discovered, and this had been found by Lowe himself in the ruins of a tumbledown cottage near the place where the car had been abandoned.

  It was nothing much, only three half-smoked cigarettes of a cheap and popular brand. But they had been fresh, and showed that someone had been there recently.

  It was quite probable that they had no connection at all with the disappearance of White, but Lowe had picked them up and put them in an old envelope in case they should prove useful later. And that was the entire result of the night’s search.

  At eight o’clock, tired and dispirited, and full of vague fears, they went back to Greytower.

  McWraith made some coffee, while Lowe, Hartley and Jim discussed the situation.

  ‘It looks very serious to me, sir,’ said Hartley gravely. ‘There’s no doubt that those punctures were made deliberately in order to stop the car.’

  Lowe nodded.

  ‘I agree with you,’ he said. ‘The question is, what happened after the car was stopped? White wouldn’t have let himself be overpowered without a struggle, and there is no trace of violence.’

  ‘It seems more than likely,’ suggested Jim, ‘that if the tyres had suddenly burst with no apparent reason he would have got out to find the cause —’

  ‘And was set upon,’ Lowe concluded as he paused. ‘Yes, I think that’s what must have happened.’

  He took the cup of steaming coffee that McWraith handed to him and sipped gratefully at its contents.

  ‘Well, I don’t know what we can do next, sir,’ said the superintendent, vainly trying to stifle a prodigious yawn.

  ‘I’m afraid at present we can do nothing,’ answered the dramatist wearily. ‘The thing we ought to do is to get some sleep.’

  Hartley smiled a little wanly.

  ‘I s
han’t be able to get any sleep, sir,’ he said. ‘The inquest on that fellow who was shot at the cross-roads is fixed for ten o’clock, and I shall have to go and attend to the preliminaries.’

  Lowe started.

  In the worry and excitement following the disappearance of White he had forgotten all about the inquest.

  ‘I’ve got a subpoena for that,’ he said. ‘It was brought to me at the inn yesterday. There was one for White, too.’

  ‘It’s being held in the village hall,’ said Hartley. ‘But I shall have to go back to Hythe.’

  He gulped down his coffee, found that it was hotter than he thought, and gasped.

  ‘I ought to go now, sir, I think,’ he spluttered; ‘it’s getting on for half-past eight.’

  ‘You carry on,’ said Lowe. ‘We’ll see you again at the inquest.’

  Hartley departed, and the dramatist, who was feeling almost dead with worry and lack of sleep, went upstairs and had a cold bath.

  When he had shaved and changed into another suit from the bags which he had brought back from the car he felt more normal.

  His eyes were hot and dry and there was a tight feeling in his head, but the heaviness had gone.

  Jim and McWraith followed his example, and when they came back found that Lowe had cooked the breakfast.

  By the time they had eaten the meal it was time to set off for the village hall.

  ‘I don’t suppose the proceedings will take very long,’ said the dramatist as they strode along the road. ‘I’ve no doubt that the police will ask for an adjournment.’

  It was just ten when they came to the red-brick building lying back from the High Street, which was the only sign of modernity in Stonehurst, and served the dual purpose of schoolroom and social club.

  The coroner had not yet put in an appearance, but the place was already crowded to capacity.

  And Lowe looked at the people with interest.

  This was the first time he had had an opportunity of seeing the inhabitants of Stonehurst en masse. And he decided that they looked a very mixed lot.

  The front seats were occupied by what he guessed to be the more important of the residents, and behind these was a sprinkling of men and women whom he found very difficult to place.

  They were not villagers; there was nothing of the country about their appearance. And he concluded after a little while that they must be the servants that Hartley had mentioned the newcomers to Stonehurst had brought with them.

  Standing about at the back of the hall were the villagers proper. Farmers and their labourers, shopkeepers, etc., and among them the fat unhealthy-faced landlord of the Crossed Hands.

  Superintendent Hartley joined him at that moment, and Lowe in a whisper asked him to name the people who were present.

  Hartley, still looking tired from his sleepless night, glanced swiftly round.

  ‘That’s Lady Thurley with her niece,’ he said in a low voice.

  And following the direction of his eyes, Lowe saw a thin elderly woman dressed in black with a harsh eagle-like face, who was sitting bolt upright at one end of the second row of chairs. Beside her was a girl who looked rather uncomfortable.

  Behind these two was a man of military appearance, with an iron-grey moustache and hair of the same colour.

  He was accompanied by a woman heavily made up, who might have been any age from thirty to fifty.

  ‘They are Mr. and Mrs. Gordon-Watts,’ whispered Hartley, ‘and the man beside them is Mr. Netherton.’

  ‘Who’s the foreign-looking man?’ asked Lowe. ‘Is that the Frenchman you were talking about?’

  The superintendent nodded.

  ‘Yes, Mr. Lucia,’ he replied; ‘and the fellow behind him is Linney. That’s Toogood, that thin-faced man talking to Dr. Grendon.’

  Trevor Lowe eyed each of Stonehurst’s elite, and came to the conclusion that he did not like any of them.

  There was something wrong about them somewhere, and he could not make up his mind what it was. Somehow they did not fit. They should not have been here at all. The place where one would expect to find them was a place like the lounge of a garish, flash hotel in the West End.

  As the thought entered his mind he realised with a little inward start what it was that was wrong with them.

  They were flashy, that was it — common people, trying to pass themselves off as gentry.

  In spite of the smart clothes and the paint and the powder, the origin blazed forth.

  There would have been nothing very much in this if they had not all been alike. All stamped with that same blatant trade mark.

  Lowe’s thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of the coroner and the opening of the proceedings.

  Dr. Peters was the first witness called, and he testified in his clear, rather staccato voice, to the cause of death, and after one or two questions the coroner let him go.

  Lowe himself was the next witness, and he described in detail how he and Arnold White had discovered the body.

  The coroner had evidently been interviewed by the police, for he asked the dramatist no questions at all, but thanked him for his statement and called Superintendent Hartley.

  Hartley’s evidence was extremely discreet.

  He admitted that the identity of the dead man had not yet been discovered, but that the police hoped to be in a position shortly to offer further evidence both in respect to his identity and to the manner in which he had met his death. They were quite certain that it was not a case of suicide, but at this juncture they were not prepared to suggest anybody as having been responsible for the crime.

  There were certain clues being followed up, and in the interest of the law he wished to ask the coroner for an adjournment until that day week, to enable further evidence to be collected.

  His request was granted after only a slight hesitation on the part of the coroner, and the inquest came to an end.

  The coroner collected his notes, had a word or two with the superintendent and a small dapper man, whom Lowe suspected was the chief constable for the district, and departed.

  The hall began to clear amid a buzz of conversation, and the dramatist found himself outside with Jim and McWraith.

  ‘Well, that’s that,’ he remarked.

  ‘Are you coming back to the house with us?’ asked Jim, looking about in the hope of catching a glance from Jill Heyford.

  Lowe shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he replied. ‘I want to have a word with Hartley. I’ll see you later.’

  He saw the superintendent, accompanied by the short, dapper man, making his way towards him, and went to meet them.

  ‘This is Major Winning, the chief constable,’ said Hartley. ‘Mr. Trevor Lowe, Major.’

  The chief constable extended a hand and gripped the dramatist’s.

  ‘How do you do, Mr. Lowe,’ he said. ‘I rather wanted to have a talk to you. Is there anywhere we can go, Hartley, for a drink?’

  ‘There’s only the Crossed Hands, sir,’ answered the superintendent, ‘and I wouldn’t go there if you’re going to talk.’

  ‘Suppose we go over to Hythe and have some lunch?’ suggested Lowe. ‘You’ve got a car, haven’t you, Hartley —’

  ‘He didn’t use it this morning,’ broke in the chief constable; ‘he came over with me in mine, and that’s just as good. Let’s get along.’

  He led the way over to a closed saloon that stood outside the hall.

  Several groups of the people who had been present at the brief inquest were still standing about talking, and they eyed the three covertly as they walked towards the car.

  ‘Shall I drive, sir?’ asked the superintendent.

  ‘I wish you would,’ answered Winning. ‘Then I can get in the back and have a talk with Mr. Lowe as we go along.’

  Hartley climbed up behind the wheel as Lowe got into the interior with the chief constable.

  ‘Have a cigar?’ asked the latter, producing his case as they drove off.

  ‘No, thanks, I’d rathe
r have a pipe, if you don’t mind,’ said Lowe.

  He put his hand into his pocket for his pouch, and in doing so his fingers touched something smooth and square. He drew it out, frowning, and found that it was a sealed envelope.

  ‘How the devil did that get there?’ he said aloud, staring at it, and Winning glanced at him quickly.

  ‘Isn’t it yours?’ he asked.

  Lowe shook his head.

  ‘It wasn’t there when I went to the inquest,’ he declared, ‘but it’s certainly got my name on it.’

  He pointed to the bold ‘Trevor Lowe, Esq.,’ printed in block letters.

  ‘Why not open it and see what’s inside?’ suggested the chief constable with a smile.

  Lowe slid his thumb under the flap and drew out a single sheet of paper.

  After a brief glance he passed it to Major Winning.

  ‘What do you make of that?’ he said quietly.

  Winning read the message with staring eyes, and his lips pursed into a silent whistle.

  Like the envelope, it was printed, and ran:

  ‘GET OUT OF STONEHURST IF YOU WANT TO LIVE. THIS IS THE ONLY WARNING YOU WILL GET.’

  There was no signature.

  ‘I wonder which of the people present at the inquest put that into my pocket?’ said Trevor Lowe softly.

  Chapter Seventeen – Gathering Shadows

  Night came down on Stonehurst with a white, cold mist that filled the lanes and narrow streets and spread out over the fields and meadows like heavy frozen steam.

  It was a ground-mist only, for the sky above was clear; moonless, but with many stars.

  In the majority of the cottages and houses the lights had long since been put out. But here and there a window gleamed blearily through the swirling vapour, showing that a few at least of the inhabitants were still wakeful.

  In Dr. Grendon’s neat little house by the green, in the White House, in the Lodge, and further away in the Bungalow. There were lights also at Wood Dene, shining from the window of Lady Thurley’s big bedroom; and on the outskirts of the village in the Martins’ cottage which had been rented by Mr. Lucia.

  In the dark mass of Greytower, rising out of the sea of thin fog that enswathed it, there was no light, for Jim Winslow, Trevor Lowe and Ian McWraith had gone to bed early to make up the sleep they had missed on the night before.